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Photo Essay 

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Urbex is the discovery of human-made buildings, commonly abandoned ruins or concealed parts of the built environment. Photography and historical interest/documentation are heavily involved, and sometimes it may entail the infringement of private property. Curiosity often inspires explorers as they catch glimpses of abandoned structures and machinery. These places and objects may be regarded as garbage or filth, but it can stimulate thoughts about the stories left behind and what it tells about society.

Each item “has a story attached, one that ties it to an individual or event that bears significance and pathos. And they certainly evoke. Their aura is very apparent. Each acts as a touchstone; not so much illuminating the topics of political and forensic interest, the exhibits are material correlates for the intimate personal experiences, the individual stories.” (Shanks, Platt, & Rathje, 2004) In this photo (figure 1), we can see an old treehouse that once echoed the laughter and cheer of children but now howls the wind. I once had a conversation with a friend about the eeriness you feel after realizing that it was your last time doing something, like playing in a treehouse as a kid. These actions become ingrained in our everyday lives, and then all of a sudden it ends, and they become gestures of our past. Why did we stop doing these acts in the first place? What happened in life that managed to break a convention of the everyday? Full of twists and turns and ups and downs, life continues to leave objects and structures reminiscent of the people who left them behind. 

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This photo captures (figure 2) the remnants of a burn pile on my family’s property. Through the ashes and debris, we see the brilliant green of nature, demonstrating how it will overcome humanity’s harshness. However, we also see a mangled bottle that managed to survive the flames. “This is a process of archaeological metamorphosis: mundane things come to carry the baggage of history; they become allegorical. There is also an elision in this process: conventional historiography (of chains of causation, sociopolitical analysis, telling of the unfolding of events on a political stage) slips away, is irrelevant in the confrontation between the banality of everyday life, sentimental association and the apocalyptic (confrontations with horror, death, the clash of civilizations)” (Shanks, Platt, & Rathje, 2004) I can envision my uncle and dad out here working all day to clear areas of the property and gathering supplies to add to the burn pile. They would have to have at least a six-pack with them to stay hydrated, which were thrown onto the pile afterwards. So when a stranger may look at this mutated bottle, they may see garbage or, like me, see it as an artifact. One that tells a story about my family’s past but also about societal norms.

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This is another photo (figure 3) taken on my family’s property. A gate that once stood tall is now being consumed and camouflaged by vines and grass.  My dad once told me there was a barn on this part of the property, but it had mysteriously burned down. My mom claims that my uncle’s ex-girlfriend did it. However, the true events are still unknown and leaves us to wonder and theorize. “The archaeological refers to ruin and responses to it, to the mundane and quotidian articulated with grand historical scenarios, to materializations of the experience of history, material aura, senses of place and history, choices of what to keep and what to let go (remember/forget), the material artifact as allegorical, collections and their systems, the city and its material cultural capitalizations (investments in pasts and futures), the intimate connection between all this and a utopian frame of mind (archaeology is not just about the past, but about desired futures too). And the stuff of it all is garbage” (Shanks, Platt, & Rathje, 2004)

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“There is an intimacy here in the material artifact, and its testimony to an everyday event” (Shanks, Platt, & Rathje, 2004).

This photo (figure 4) is another shot of the burn pile on the property which captures an ordinary lightbulb. A bulb that once illuminated a room that was filled with people, laughing, smiling and talking. A bulb turned on and off every day, now destined to the bottom of a burn pile. Surrounded by rusty bolts and screws, ash, dried leaves and sticks, this once bright object now evanesces. What does this have to do with our society? Well, when was the last time you thought about the items you have thrown away? Most people fail to think about objects again after discarding them, a perfect example of the out-of-sight, out-of-mind concept.  We tend to assume it made it to the landfill to be added to the palimpsest and then forgotten about it. Our society is quick to disregard the past in order to move on to the new and improved without thought and thus has plagued the Earth with debris and artifacts. 

I was out driving one day down Sunningdale when a softly hidden crumbling concrete structure caught my eye. I pulled off to the side and followed my curiosity that led me to what seemed to be a garage or drive shed. Two concrete stage-like rooms were filled with remnants of its past owner.  Off to the side, covered in mounds of grass and earth, laid a rusty mangled piece of farm machinery that was left dormant for years. Whether these artifacts have been left behind by humans, botanical or animal intervention, the mere action of these objects being discarded is unavoidable (Garrett, 2011). This speaks volumes to how our society overlooks the beautiful history of abandoned relics and how the past echoes through the present into the future—leaving the next generation to overcome and learn from their ancestor’s failures.

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“First, modernity is unthinkable without its museal and archaeological component. Second, given the association of archaeology and garbage, this cultural imaginary is at the heart of the composition and decomposition of modernity and modernism.” (Shanks, Platt, & Rathje, 2004) This is demonstrated in these photos (figure 6 &7) that were taken in the back of the drive shed off Sunningdale. Hidden behind cascading vines laid a quiescent metal beast. It initially startled me and then the more I gazed at it, the more I began to imagine how someone could leave this here to wither away.  Then I noticed how the structure used two overgrown deteriorating CN train cars as the base with some wood framing and metal sheets to make up the rest. It was something I had never seen before in real life and I was awestruck. There was something harmonious about the way the sun crept in through the holes in the metal to illuminate the entire space. Farming equipment, trucks, and other machines offer practical glimpses of what the modern world looked like years ago, allowing us to appreciate how society has developed and progressed from where we stood several years ago.

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Urban Explorers often discover discarded machinery and equipment hidden, and curiosity leads them to investigate. They unearth the layer of rust beneath the weeds that have taken over the once-functional hardware that now lives in the natural world. These explorations elicit thoughts about the past stories left behind by these ageing artefacts, which are often never found and told due to eerie histories that are unknown. But as a society, we see abandoned objects and buildings as trash and disregard it, rather than appreciate the magic that comes from the untold stories.

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